As mobile traffic increases, overall revenue decreases

desktop traffic is stagnant, slightly decreasing

[expat123]

I have a responsive design web site (with responsive ad units) with increasing users, sessions and pageviews and decreasing adsense revenue. Mobile traffic is increasing; desktop traffic is stagnant and slightly decreasing.The problem is that mobile cost per click is only 33 percent of desktop traffic and declining.Mobile click through rate is as good desktop. I am getting as many clicks on mobile as desktop.Because of mobile CPC, as mobile traffic grows, I earn less money.Is anyone else facing this type of situation? And what are you doing about it?

[wa desert rat]

Clicks, CTR and CTC about the same for mobile versus desktop on my site (a forum with fixed ads). Not a lot of revenue at the best of times but at least it's consistent. :P

[IanCP]

I think this is a very specific website by website situation highly dependent upon genre.

During the week I read somewhere else that mobile has little or no impacts on some genres [perhaps like mine] because people are unlikely to arrive there using mobile. On the other hand sites catering to "what's on", bookings, restaurant locators, etc would see ever increasing mobile traffic.

[anefarious1]

expat123 I am experiencing the exact same situation. Actually, my mobile RPM is less than a third of desktop. I am now getting a lot of traffic but all the growth has come from mobile. You are not alone.

[EditorialGuy]

I think IanCP's comments about genre make a lot of sense.

For what it's worth, our mobile, desktop, and tablet traffic are all increasing, albeit at different rates), but desktop and tablet continue to earn far higher RPM than mobile does.

Over the past 30 days, tablet has produced the highest RPM for us. Mobile RPM has been about 1/4 of tablet and 1/3 of desktop RPM.

[engine]

IanCP's correct about genre, imho. Some sectors are just right for mobile, and less so with desktop, thereby giving an apparent imbalance.

I have come to accept that mobile traffic is up, but earnings have not grown at the same rate.

All the companies are wrestling with this, and as far as I see it, the best solution right now is to increase traffic.

[wa desert rat]

After watching my main site for a couple of weeks either something has changed or I just haven't paid close enough attention (I do have a day job). While traffic for desktop users is much greater than mobile users, the CTR for mobile users is about double that of the desktop users. The CTC is, of course, all over the map. So mobile users, at least for my site (a cycling forum) are less than half that of desktop users but they (the mobile users) are clicking on ads more often. And I only have one ad for mobile versus two (or three in the case of the home page) for desktop.

It had never occurred to me that mobile users might click on ads at a greater rate than desktop users and I am pretty sure that this is a relatively new development. Mobile users are increasing but desktop users don't seem to be decreasing.

Interesting times.

WDR

[OvniSpur]

Just to offer some contrary evidence: My RPM for mobile users is usually about 2.5x higher than desktop. I use almost all responsive ads, and I'm careful to space things out in a way that accidental pokes are minimized.

Unfortunately, my site is much more appropriate for desktops due to the type of content.